A Thread about the film JFK

i think one of the unintended effects of the oliver stone movie is that it made this subject basically a joke to most ppl in a way that it wasn't before. like if you go back and read old book reviews, associated press stories, etc., from the 1970s and 1980s, oswald is generally referred to as the "accused assassin" and there's a general acknowledgement that the whole thing feels pretty fishy even if no one really wants to commit to a specific scenario. iirc the ny times even gave a more or less positive review to jim garrison's book. post-"jfk" there's a major backlash which culminates in the widespread praise for gerald posner's "case closed" (not a very good book imo) for supposedly clearing up the whole business. this sorta explains to me why the coverage of trump's "i'm gonna release the files!" stunt a while back was so confused, with most ppl torn between the impulse to make fun of it and the inescapable suspicion that something crazy might turn up after all.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 10 September 2019 19:27 (two hours ago) link

That is an interesting shift. It’s funny to say but JFK might be one of the last truly subversive films released by a major studio, just in terms of how much it riled up the media/political class. It was too bold and impeccably crafted to ignore, even if the quotably purple dialogue and Stone’s “feverish” (sniff sniff) earnestness made it ripe for parody.

Imagine any movie having that kind of impact now. I mean, we still have dumb pearl-clutching moral panics about studio product, but it’s all focused on the most inane manufactured micro-targeted culture war BS.

JFK’s version of events might be uh, “off”, but it got at something genuine that is becoming more apparent as time goes on. Whether it’s because of Russia or Epstein or just paying attention, *everybody* is a conspiracy theorist to some degree now.

def going to read that Summers’ Jfk - loved his “Arrogance of Power”

yep!

i tore through a bunch of jfk-related books a few years ago and summers' was probably the most balanced and convincing one. and yeah, nixon book is solid!

Vincent Bugliosi wrote a massive "Oswald acted alone" book that came out in 2007; never read it myself, plus suspect Bugliosi went a bit nutty in later years

I want to recommend the 2012 book A Cruel and Shocking Act by Philip Shenon. It’s an account of the inner workings of the Warren Commission based on interviews with some of the the surviving people involved. It’s a perspective I haven’t really seen chronicled in depth elsewhere.

It also goes into how the investigation was hampered by the CIA’s withholding of crucial information that later came to light, i.e. the thwarted attempts to assassinate Castro, and their knowledge of Oswald’s movements and associations.

Also good on that front is Jefferson Morley’s book The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, about the famously paranoid head of the CIA’s counter-intelligence division. Angleton started a special file on Oswald as soon he defected to the USSR and continued monitoring his associations and tracking his movements right up until November 22, 1963. Apparently access to the file was used as part of Angleton’s attempts to ferret out suspected moles within the agency.

There’s also a lot to suggest that during his time in Mexico City Oswald was used (probably unwittingly) as a pawn in some kind of spy game between the Cuban embassy and the CIA. If he was inspired or encouraged to assassinate JFK during this time (as Shenon believes he was, by pro-Castro Cubans) and the CIA knew and did nothing...well, you can see how explosive that information would be.

never read it myself, plus suspect Bugliosi went a bit nutty in later years

Bugliosi is mostly nuts throughout his entire life... Tom O'Neil's recent Manson book gets into the details.

There’s also a lot to suggest that during his time in Mexico City Oswald was used (probably unwittingly) as a pawn in some kind of spy game between the Cuban embassy and the CIA. If he was inspired or encouraged to assassinate JFK during this time (as Shenon believes he was, by pro-Castro Cubans) and the CIA knew and did nothing...well, you can see how explosive that information would be.

The Morley book is great - recommend reading it next if folks have already read one of the books name-checked on the thread. My interpretation is that when Oswald was in Mexico City, telling everyone who would bother to listen that he was going to kill JFK, the CIA's reaction was "huh. we don't care - you'll be doing us a favor. In fact, let's take a photo of some other guy going into the embassy and claim it's Oswald - just to f. things up."

They were a wise bunch of birds!

― omar little, Tuesday, April 30, 2019

the story about oswald being (supposedly) impersonated in mexico city before the assassination -- a photo of a guy who looked nothing like him, a recording of a different guy's voice -- is pretty wild.

According to his Marine buddies, he got Maggie's drawers. That means he wasn't any good.

Pipe the bimbo in red. Mm-mm.

If I answer that question you keep asking...if I give you the name of the big enchilada...then it's bon voyage, Deano. Like a bullet in my head, you dig? You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedy's as dead as that crabmeat. The government's still breathing. You want to line up with a dead man?

Stop eatin' that crab meat and listen!

i like the visual, comparing Kennedy to dead crab meat.

this movie was probably as much fun to make as Wet Hot American Summer (which could have been a working title based on the southern sweat in this)

I didn't pay two bits for a target, just to have someone else shoot it!

no honest working man can afford to buy a car in this goddam country anymore. maybe i'll have to go to RUSSIA. to buy a car.

really duuuum dye-log

Still unsure if Americans in the 20th Century ever used to say "two bits."

At the time of the shooting, there seemed to be some commotion. I'm just unable to describe...a flash of light or smoke or something, which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary had occurred on the embankment.

GODDAMN

NO

oswald was no ordinary soldier! he was-- he was probably military intelligence, that's why he was trained in russian. it's no accident. he was IN RUSSIA.

go back to sleep!

Ah've been sleepin' for three years, Liz!

we should perform this as an ILX cast stage play.

i tore through a bunch of jfk-related books a few years ago and summers' was probably the most balanced and convincing one.

btw thanks j.d. (again), bought and read this in a gluttonous ~30hrs after this post. highly recommended, feels as comprehensive as anything i've read and yeah it is v carefully not trying to convince you of anything, which is probably why came out of it finally believing in a second shooter lol

had previously always been an "oswald acted alone and the govt covered up because a real investigation would have revealed too much about the intelligence services, both wrt oswald and more broadly" guy but have felt myself moving to "mobsters instigated a hit via a mafia architecture that in places had become indistinguishable from the intelligence services (and the govt covered up because etc)"

oswald really does act for a long time just like someone in something like cointelpro might act but i am still loath to reduce (inflate?) him to a conscious employee because i am infatuated w a read of him where he considers himself always the protagonist and always a step ahead of whomever he is telling whatever or doing whatever for. for me the beautiful idea is that I'M A PATSY is a moment of real-time realization not (or not just) that he has been set up by [santo trafficante/e howard hunt/fidel castro/allan dulles/lyndon johnson/marx's ghost] but more spookily that here on the other side of a finally achieved ambition to become an immortal mover of history he has suddenly realized he cannot stop also being something's agent. that this figurative existential discovery-- a standard part of life imo-- is naturally superimposed over what may have been a literal and v specific discovery-- "i'm in the cold war and i lost track of who's paying me"-- is why oswald/jfk remains the penultimate in "o no the hall of mirrors of the psyche" spy stories: above tinker, below hamlet.

I just got Summers' book from the library!

I just placed a hold on it at my library!

also just got JFK from the library since I hadn't seen it in several years (or should i say, "yee-ahhs")

haha what have i wrought?? (you're welcome guys)

i can see myself watching this every few years from now on

one edit i really love: Garrison's reading the Warren Commission report, going through the testimony of the shitkicker Dallas police sergeant, we see him on the stand talking about "tramps and ho-bos", the close up on his insignia, reflecting in the light to jump cut to 1963.

lil transitional things like that (my fave example is cutting from john candy saying "i never met the dude" to his meeting the dude while positioned exactly the same way in the frame, so that present john candy and past john candy collaborate on the motion of a single seamless drag from their cigarettes) impress me cuz they reveal the movie's style was not created in the editing room

haha what have i wrought??

not so much a recommendation as... an organic phenomenon. it grew. changed shape. developed... appetites.

the Candy scene is so good. again, of course:

"hell no -- like i told that Bertrand cat right off ("cashew piece?") this ain't my scene, man."

one likes friends that have friends.

i was watching the Clay Shaw interview scene and it's amazing how the actual interview is just denial after denial and finally Garrison loses his cool and based on nothing thinks he's nailed the guy (well, based on the editing of the film in which we see "the truth").

the actual interview is not incriminating, when Shaw says "you're reaching!" he's correct. Love it.

AM I?!

people like you don't have to, i guess.

may i go?

people like you just walk between the raindrops.

...may i go.

I ALWAYS LOCK MY FILES!

so what is precisely the point of the woman who accosts Garrison in the street to remind him that they sang together during his reelection party ("You're the Cream in My Co-ffeeeeee....")?

My favorite editing touches happen when Stone flash forwards within scenes with visuals (Jack Ruby talking while his body is wheeled out) or sound (Clay Shaw introducing himself to the Garrison crew while a doorbell tinkle announces the arrival of O'Keefe years earlier).

i thought that woman in the street was in there to show -- Jim Garrison, Man of the People

I thought so too but Stone is not a director of ancillary moments.

I don't believe I ever mentioned this (maybe to dlh in private): watching JFK in high school with me, my buddy gasped when Silvia Odio's name was mentioned. "She's an old friend of my mom's."

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, April 30, 2019

So I cheated and skipped head in the Summers book to read about the Odio episode. Apparently he found her and her sister's account credible.

i think there are a few throwaway moments throughout showing Highly Respected Jim Garrison, like immediately after he goes into that restaurant and he's greeted by the maitre'd who knows him personally and even leaves the adjoining table empty so they can have privacy. He's supposed to be Jimmy Stewart!

martini waiting for him!

i really love the bug-eyed FBI agent who accosts Bill Broussard outside Ferrie's apartment. one of those nicely cast tiny roles, they needed a guy who could plausibly intimidate Michael Rooker.

You listen. You listen real hard. Get in the car.

a doorbell tinkle announces the arrival of O'Keefe years earlier

this is terrific yeah, almost posted about it the other day-- the sound is triggered by garrison saying o'keefe's name, plays over a deadpan shot of shaw denying he's heard it while it literally rings a bell in his head, and immediately turns out to be a J-cut into answering the door.

afaict the cream in my coffee lady is there so u know garrison is cool w black people, it's kinda cringey. worse imo is the scene where an anonymous and unspeaking black father+son are tendentiously arranged near kennedy's graveside, presumably to be seen paying tribute to all jfk did for civil rights in contrast to his monstrous usurper